Listen how they say your name. If they can't say that right, there's no way they're going to know how to treat you proper, neither.

If I begin writing a poem that means I'm intrigued in some way by whatever it's about and that if I'm not trying to find something new and pushing the envelope in the poem I can't expect my reader to be particularly excited about it either.

The poetry that sustains me is when I feel that, for a minute, the clouds have parted and I've seen ecstasy or something

The American Dream is a phrase we'll have to wrestle with all of our lives. It means a lot of things to different people. I think we're redefining it now

I think if you put something in a file that says "war poems" or "love poems" that you already restrict the way in which the poem might move.

I prefer to explore the most intimate moments, the smaller, crystallized details we all hinge our lives on.

Crassly put: When I write, I am trying not to bore myself and my readers.